Letter to God
by Stephane Richer
Summary: A solid case for the innocent could be made and laid to rest.


Letter to God

Disclaimer: I don't own Sheryl Crow's "Letter to God" or Tite Kubo's _Bleach_.

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Nanao is literally a death god. She has killed, looked death in the face, seen war after war. But this is different. Death surrounds her, penetrates Soul Society in a way it never has before. It billows from the fireplaces with the smoke. It drips from the sky with the rain, with the sunbeams, with lightning. It is in the smell of flowers, the smell of incense, the smell of liquor. Everything ordinary is tinged with blood. Her vision is tinted red. She wakes up sometimes and wonders if she's died again already, panting and sweating and choking down air like breathing is going out of style.

It's excruciating, the waiting and not knowing. Where are they sending souls? Will they return? She assumes that they will not, and with every squad member who goes off to face their mysterious and powerful enemies, she marks off another fatality, prepares to send another family a letter. No one has come back yet, even in a body bag, though they have received communications of confirmed deaths. Even she, ever-meticulous, wants to lose count, but she cannot. The first thing she did when she transferred divisions was to learn the name and position of every member of the Gotei 13. Not that there were very many left, even at that point. She knew what the consequences might be but went ahead.

Actually, that wasn't the first thing she did. The first thing was to comfort an old man, a retired fifth seat who'd lost three children that day, two of whom she'd never met. She knew there would be more grieving parents, spouses, children, siblings. She knew that she could not look them in the eyes if she did not know their loved one, could not lie that he or she died a noble death if she could not bring a face to the front of her mind.

She cannot sleep at night, has requisitioned medicine from the fourth that may be of better use on the front lines. Well, Shunsui has requested it for her, and sometimes has to practically shove it down her throat. Even so, the artificial sleep cannot keep her thoughts from repeating names and faces of the dead soldiers, even as the toll rises. One after another, they appear in her mind, like the sheep they tell her to count.

She lies to the families with a straight face, tells them what forms they need to send in for compensation, offers empty condolences. She stamps forms, sends out papers, reading them through twice and conjuring up a face to every name.

What will her parents do when she dies? They knew they were giving her up for good when they sent her away. She had been so young, had barely returned. The eighth division was more of a family to her than her parents had ever been, but in the scheme of things most of them might forget. Perhaps they would curse her name. She is sitting, relatively safely in Soul Society while they fight on the front lines. Some of them have already died, and these are the names that haunt her the most, the ones she has not had to memorize. She can hear them speak and laugh and watch them practice sparring with one another. It doesn't seem real that souls as lively as that could be so suddenly extinguished.

But if Nanao does die, if she has to go out on the front lines or if Soul Society is invaded again, then who knows? Her father once told her that he had assumed she was already dead. Her mother is equally dispassionate. No one will come to the new lieutenant, to cry or to collect money or to be consoled. She runs a tight ship, and part of that entails leaving no personal mark. Someone as organized as Nanao could pick up right where she left off and that would be that.

But even if she is inconsequential, she has privately taken up the burden of these many lives. Of every dead Shinigami, and of every dead Quincy, too. They may be fighting a bloody war against Soul Society under a twisted ideological pretense, but a life is a life. Fatality is a finality, and perhaps some of them did not truly realize the trappings of being a soldier. Some of them may be undertrained, there just because the Vandenreich needed able bodies.

Shunsui would miss her, she knows. But he's the Captain-Commander now; he can't take any time off to grieve. Without her, he will be able to carry on. As much as she nags him and forces him to do work, she knows he has lived hundreds of years without her and can survive hundreds more without her yet again.

It's a very lonely thought, that of her existence. Even of anyone's existence. At some point, they will all be forgotten, just another old name carved into a tombstone. Their souls may cycle through again, or they may not. This may be her last chance ever to leave a mark, and yet she does not. She leaves stamps on the paperwork, but they do not bear her name.

Does it even matter if she's out fighting or back here? Is any part of the war more brutal than another? Why is this even something that can be argued? It makes her sick and dizzy; she knows it's not the lack of sleep this time. The acknowledgement of the pointlessness of all these sacrifices has punched her in the stomach yet again. If each side loses 10,000 then can there truly be a winner? 1,000? 100? Ten? One? What measure is a life? What measure is a war?

Nanao wants to be a child again, reading with Lisa, feeling safe and comfortable and prepared. But nothing could prepare her for this.


End file.
